3 ms·

> proper journalism Nobody's ever going to be able to define proper journalism.

by chrisseaton 5y ago

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
No, but there is a public interest defence
- Lio 5y ago
  On 10th July 2011 Rupert Murdock was forced to close his News of the World newspaper due to overwhelming public disgust that they had hacked the answer phone and removed messages from a murdered little girl[1]. Murdock originally tried to use "public interest" to justify that. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacking_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacki...
consumer451 5y ago
> Nobody's ever going to be able to define proper journalism. I've had a thought bouncing around my pachinko machine of a brain about this topic. While at the single story/topic level you might be correct, I think there may be a pretty basic test for bias. Using sentiment analysis, (manually or ML) couldn't you figure out which topics or groups a news org never speaks ill of? The omitted criticisms could paint a pretty good picture of bias.
- webnrrd2k 5y ago
  I honestly can't see how this would work in practice... It quickly falls into a "who will watch the watchers" kind of situation... I'm trying to picture how it would work in practice. Say that there are two news organizations, one wildly pro-Trump, one Wildly anti-Trump. It's already clear that they are both biased and ignoring a lot of information. But wouldn't one group still be closer to the truth? How would anyone know which one?
  - consumer451 5y ago
    That’s a very good point, and shows one of the limits of my line of thought. Though I don’t think it makes it entirely useless. Using your example, pro-Trump vs anti-Trump… one would have to wait until Trump is gone as POTUS and see how each news org treats the new POTUS. Maybe this analysis would only work over long periods of time. The other aspect of all of this that you made me think about is that bias is not necessarily bad. I am biased towards democracy, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Also, bias against something which is objectively "bad" is not a bad thing. edit: Maybe the solution here is to embrace bias, and state your biases openly.

> proper journalism Nobody's ever going to be able to define proper journalism.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

No, but there is a public interest defence

Lio 5y ago
On 10th July 2011 Rupert Murdock was forced to close his News of the World newspaper due to overwhelming public disgust that they had hacked the answer phone and removed messages from a murdered little girl[1]. Murdock originally tried to use "public interest" to justify that. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacking_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacki...

consumer451 5y ago

> Nobody's ever going to be able to define proper journalism. I've had a thought bouncing around my pachinko machine of a brain about this topic. While at the single story/topic level you might be correct, I think there may be a pretty basic test for bias. Using sentiment analysis, (manually or ML) couldn't you figure out which topics or groups a news org never speaks ill of? The omitted criticisms could paint a pretty good picture of bias.

webnrrd2k 5y ago
I honestly can't see how this would work in practice... It quickly falls into a "who will watch the watchers" kind of situation... I'm trying to picture how it would work in practice. Say that there are two news organizations, one wildly pro-Trump, one Wildly anti-Trump. It's already clear that they are both biased and ignoring a lot of information. But wouldn't one group still be closer to the truth? How would anyone know which one?
- consumer451 5y ago
  That’s a very good point, and shows one of the limits of my line of thought. Though I don’t think it makes it entirely useless. Using your example, pro-Trump vs anti-Trump… one would have to wait until Trump is gone as POTUS and see how each news org treats the new POTUS. Maybe this analysis would only work over long periods of time. The other aspect of all of this that you made me think about is that bias is not necessarily bad. I am biased towards democracy, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Also, bias against something which is objectively "bad" is not a bad thing. edit: Maybe the solution here is to embrace bias, and state your biases openly.